Freakin' Angels
by INMH
Summary: Kali and Atropos in a bar. Both have been screwed over significantly by creatures of the angelic nature. Mentions of past Gabriel/Kali and barely hinted-at Castiel/Atropos and Balthazar/Atropos.


Freakin' Angels

Rating: PG-13/T

Genre: Humor  
>Summary: Kali and Atropos in a bar. Both have been screwed over significantly by creatures of the angelic nature.<br>Author's Note: Yesh, just another one of those 'it just hit me' ones. Supernatural likes to do that to me.

Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural. It belongs to Eric Kripke.

()()

About a year and a half following the botched apocalypse, a little longer since Gabriel's death, Kali wandered into a bar in Detroit and found herself in a one in a million chance situation.

She had sat down at the bar and ordered a martini. It was a fairly busy night, and so other than that she went relatively unnoticed. Not that she would have minded if a man had tried to hit on her, because she did so love the expressions that crossed their faces when she shot them down like Daffy Duck during… Any given season.

It was by pure happenstance that, in a moment where the music was paused between songs and there happened to be a lull in the chatter that predominated the room that she heard, towards the edge of the bar itself, a voice so familiar that it nagged Kali in that way that something we know is familiar will when we can't seem to identify it.

"May want to lighten up on the drinks there," A distinctly female voice said dryly. "You're due to get cirrhosis in ten years. It'll kill you." A pause, then, "And you, you may want to give some more thought to moving to Canada, because they're going to find out about all that money you embezzled by Tuesday. It'll get ugly. Like, police-dog-biting-you-in-the-crotch ugly."

Kali frowned, looking around until her eyes landed on a young blonde woman seated at the very end of the bar, holding what Kali strongly suspected was tequila in her right hand, gesturing with her left. Right off the bat, she sensed something was off about her: The woman was in slacks, a blazer and a sweater, slightly thick-rimmed glasses riding tentatively on the bridge of her nose, threateningly to slide off with much more movement.

It was only when she processed what the woman was saying that Kali remembered who she was. It was Atropos, one of the three Fates, the Greco-Roman goddesses with known ties to the Judeo-Christian God. Actually, they had ties with a lot of different pantheons; Kali could recall Shiva doing business with them once or twice in the past. And from what she'd observed of the goddess, what she was currently doing- getting drunk and blurting out peoples' futures to them- was highly out of character.

Kali sighed. She had tried to avoid contact with gods and goddesses of other pantheons after that fiasco at the Elysian Fields, especially those of the Greco-Roman deities. She wasn't interested in making them angry with her, and that was precisely what she was going to do if the subject of that idiot, Mercury, came up. And she didn't know about Atropos, but Kali knew that Clotho, the youngest Fate, had been credited for doing some work with Mercury. At least according to their mythos.

All the same, though, this was a most curious situation.

And though she was loath to admit it, Kali was very, very interested.

With another sigh, she picked up her drink and sauntered to the end of the bar, affecting the most deadpanned, uncaring façade she could possibly muster as she stood before the blonde goddess. "Rough night, Atropos?"

"Oh, you have no i- Kali?"

Oh, and it would seem she was pretty drunk, too. Pretty obvious, in retrospect. But then, if she was right, tequila was a notoriously strong drink, and something about Atropos was screaming '_Light-weight!_'

"Evening," Kali said dryly, sinking into the seat next to her. "Is there any particular reason you're getting drunk and randomly revealing peoples' futures to them?" Atropos groaned.

"You know where I just was? I was in Pennsylvania. You know why I was there? Because that dumb-ass, crazy-ass, smug-ass angel _Balthazar_-" For a moment the blonde's slur disappeared as she snarled a snarl not unlike a hungry dog Kali had seen on the streets of New York just recently, "-Went _back_ in time and stopped the _Titanic_ from sinking."

Kali's eyebrow jumped up. "Is _that_ what that shift in the time-space continuum was all about?"

"You felt it too?" Kali sniffed.

"Of course I did. I just assumed it was the Judeo-Christian pantheon up to their usual bullshit again." Kali rarely- _rarely-_ used profanity. It was something that Loki- _Gabriel- _had always found fascinating yet unsurprising about her: Fascinating because she could go through the ugliest of situations and barely utter anything worse than 'damn' and unsurprising because only after a few minutes of speaking to her could the average person tell that Kali was too classy to swear casually.

Atropos was fairly similar: She generally tried to avoid profanity, though in her case she usually just replaced offensive words and phrases with, frankly, cheesy counterparts. But Atropos did have a temper and so, unlike Kali, if the situation was frustrating enough she was fully capable of letting loose on the curse words when it so suited her.

Like right now.

"Well, you were _right!_" Atropos' head fell into her hands. "Cas- You know Cas, right? Castiel? Scrawny vessel with black hair and kind of freaky-yet-cute blue eyes? He's actually kind of cute. He is. Balthazar's not hard on the eyes either, but I swear, he has got a _mouth_ on him that would make Gandhi wanna bitch-slap him."

In that moment, Kali felt a shudder of familiarity run through her. If she didn't know better, Atropos had just given a vague but relatively accurate description of Gabriel: Cute, clever, but a _mouth_ that never quit. Of course, she'd always had her ways of shutting him up.

"Right. So, Castiel- The one that rebelled and is currently is leading an army against the archangel Raphael?" Atropos was usually keen enough to ask questions like 'How'd you know that?', but right now the alcohol seemed to have her in a pleasant-enough buzz where she just honestly did not _give_ a damn.

"Yeah, him." Kali waited for the other goddess to elaborate, but it seemed that Atropos had forgotten what she'd been saying.

"What did he do in regards to the Titanic?"

"What'd he do? He's the one that ordered Balthazar to un-sink it!" For one small, small moment, Atropos sobered up ever so slightly, and she lowered her voice. "He's been using S-O-U-L-S to win the war. Un-sinking the Titanic created round-about 50,000." She muttered pointedly.

Kali was more than aware of the power that souls held. Just about every God and Goddess _was_. Souls were, in general, big parts of religion, and everyone who knew about them respected them for their power and importance.

Souls could be used for raw power, yes; Supernatural beings of a certain caliber could harness the power with relative ease. But the process was not without its risks; souls could become unstable, could explode with the force of a small nuclear weapon if handled incorrectly. Never mind the fact that the person _utilizing_ that kind of power was subject to all kinds of nasty side-effects including, but not limited to, madness.

Wonderful: Another psychotic angel. Just what the world needed.

She needed another drink. Desperately. Something stronger this time.

"I take it you did something about that."

"Damn _straight _I did something about it!" Atropos smirked and leaned back against the bar (slipping slightly before her slowed reflexes could react). "I told him I'd kill his little pets if he didn't un-sink the ship."

"Pets?"

"Oh, you know- Those Winchester idiots. Sam and Don."

"Dean."

"You've met them?"

"Yes." Kali's eyes slipped shut as she briefly returned to the night of that fiasco in Indiana. "I was at the conference." Atropos snorted into her drink.

"Really? Why'd you bother?" Kali pinched the bridge of her nose.

"I wanted to throw my two cents in. And it might have worked, too, if Mercury hadn't summoned Lucifer so we could all sit down and _talk_." She couldn't help but give Atropos a leery glare out of the corner of her eye. Atropos didn't seem to notice, and that was probably a good thing: Kali didn't yet know if Atropos was a confrontational-drunk. But to her relief, the blonde shrugged.

"Yeah, well, he never did have a full bushel of apples, however the saying goes. You know what I mean: He was an idiot."

With every passing moment, Kali grew to like Atropos more and more. She'd have to have a sober conversation with her some time.

"Indeed he was."

"Why'd he summon ol' Luci to the party anyway?"

"He wanted to settle on something other than all-out war." Kali was reasonably certain that she had already conveyed that, but a certain level of patience was required for someone as drunk as Atropos evidently was.

"Moron. Lucifer ain't famous for his ability to _negotiate_." Atropos snorted, downing her drink in one gulp. Kali was certain that it kept suddenly becoming full, though she had yet to see someone refill that glass. "Freakin' angels, Kali; if they're not assholes, they're idiots. Castiel _used_ to be the only exception to that rule, and now he's gone all Darth-Douchebag on us. You dated Gabriel, right?"

The lights in the room may have flickered slightly.

"I did."

"Before you were aware that he was a wingéd dick?"

"Yes."

"What was that like?"

Kali had to give that some thought.

For over four hundred years, Kali thought she'd known the man calling himself Loki. She knew his quirks, his preferences, his weaknesses, his pet peeves, almost everything. In retrospect, she now felt like she knew next to nothing about him, even though her fury and, yes, hurt with him was probably overriding her better judgment. The only aspects of Gabriel's true personality that she likely had not seen were the ones directly associated with his angelic nature.

Gabriel would be immature and cruel and self-centered when he was enacting cosmic payback on the assholes of the universe, but once he was around Kali he changed as easily as he could snap his fingers: He was still goofy, still light-hearted, but more likely to be serious and sincere, because if nothing else, she knew that he had taken her _very_ seriously.

When Kali had figured out what he was some twenty years previously, she'd ended the relationship without a second thought. She had been enraged, but did not tell Gabriel why. And when she had invited him to the conference in Muncie, Kali had held out a dim hope that Gabriel might take what his brothers were doing _seriously_ and might try to save the world he so enjoyed tormenting. More than anything else, she had hoped that he might dare to be honest with her and tell her what she already knew.

But he didn't, and that hurt even worse than having it concealed from her for four hundred years.

And the sad part was, she still loved the idiot a little bit.

"…Complicated."

Atropos nodded, her head bobbing a bit more than was natural due to the liquor. "Yeah, they're all like that."

"Are they? I've only ever met a few."

Atropos snorted. "Michael's a control-freak, Zachariah was his bitch, Raphael and Lucifer are power-hungry, Balthazar's a douche, Anna turned into a red-haired Glenn Close, Castiel's falling into a deep black hole of his own convictions, Balthazar's a douche, Rachel- Rachel was actually pretty nice, if not a bit uptight, Uriel liked blowing things up and…" She thought for a moment.

"And Balthazar's a douche?" Kali filled in dryly.

"Yup." Atropos tilted back another shot, and Kali had a feeling she'd be helping the other goddess home that night. Hopefully her sisters were both awake. "How'd you handle Gabe, anyway?"

"I didn't have to: He never tried to tangle with me." Kali paused. _Aggressively, at any rate._ She shifted, slightly uncomfortable as she was suddenly overtaken with the tactile memory of Gabriel's hands on her. "How did you handle them?"

"Michael I avoided, Raphael I avoided, Lucifer I avoided, Zachariah I avoided and made mean jokes about behind his back, I never interacted with Anna during her Glenn Close phase, Uriel I was bitchy to, Castiel I threatened to kill the Winchesters and Balthazar…" She tilted her head to the side, then snorted. "I've never been able to handle him."

"Mm. When we first met, I did have a bit of a problem with Gabriel."  
>"What'd you do?"<p>

Kali's lips twitched upward at the memory before shrugging nonchalantly. "I invited him into my bed." Atropos stared at her.

"And?"

"And then I tied him up and left him there." Kali allowed a serene smirk to cross her mouth. The light of realization was dawning in Atropos' eyes.

"I should try that," She said seriously, setting her drink down. "I should really, really try that." She grinned, went to hop off the barstool and nearly face-planted into the dusty hardwood floor of the bar. Kali rolled her eyes as the blonde caught the stool at the last moment and managed to pull herself somewhat upright.

"But first," Atropos intoned, swaying a little, "I think I might sit."

Kali snapped up a glass of water for the other goddess and nodded. "Good idea."

-End


End file.
